Salute to Adventurers eBook

She sat for a little with her eyes downcast.
“I am in your hands,” she said at last,
“Oh, the foolish girl I have been! I will
be a drag and a danger to you all.”

Then I took her hand. “Elspeth,”
I said, “it’s me will be the proud man
if I can save you. I would rather be the salvation
of you than the King of the Tidewater. And so
says Shalah, and so will say all of us.”

But I do not think she heard me. She had checked
her tears, but her wits were far away, grieving for
her uncle’s pain, and envisaging the desperate
future. At the first water we reached she bathed
her face and eyes, and using the pool as a mirror,
adjusted her hair. Then she smiled bravely, “I
will try to be a true comrade, like a man,” she
said. “I think I will be stronger when I
have slept a little.”

All that afternoon we stole from covert to covert.
It was hot and oppressive in the dense woods, where
the breeze could not penetrate. Shalah’s
eagle eyes searched every open space before we crossed,
but we saw nothing to alarm us. In time we came
to the place where we had left our party, and it was
easy enough to pick up their road. They had travelled
slowly, keeping to the thickest trees, and they had
taken no pains to cover their tracks, for they had
argued that if trouble came it would come from the
front, and that it was little likely that any Indian
would be returning thus soon and could take up their
back trail.

Presently we came to a place where the bold spurs
of the hills overhung us, and the gap we had seen
opened up into a deep valley. Shalah went in
advance, and suddenly we heard a word pass. We
entered a cedar glade, to find our four companions
unsaddling the horses and making camp.

The sight of the girl held them staring. Grey
grew pale and then flushed scarlet. He came forward
and asked me abruptly what it meant. When I told
him he bit his lips.

“There is only one thing to be done,”
he said. “We must take Miss Blair back
to the Tidewater. I insist, sir. I will go
myself. We cannot involve her in our dangers.”

He was once again the man I had wrangled with.
His eyes blazed, and he spoke in a high tone of command.
But I could not be wroth with him; indeed, I liked
him for his peremptoriness. It comforted me to
think that Elspeth had so warm a defender.

I nodded to Shalah. “Tell him,” I
said, and Shalah spoke with him. He took long
to convince, but at, the end he said no more, and went
to speak to Elspeth. I could see that she lightened
his troubled mind a little, for, having accepted her
fate, she was resolute to make the best of it, I even
heard her laugh.